


summer's only ending if you let it (don't let it)

by Anonymous



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Carolina Hurricanes, Gen, hockey at the end of the world-verse, is that a tag?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-18
Updated: 2020-02-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:48:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22782025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: "Did I ever tell you about it?" he asks. "Winning the Cup, I mean?"
Comments: 6
Kudos: 29
Collections: Anonymous





	summer's only ending if you let it (don't let it)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Restricted Work] by [ionthesparrow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ionthesparrow/pseuds/ionthesparrow). Log in to view. 



2020

Dougie has been lurking behind the tomato vines for at least ten minutes.

Let him lurk, Justin thinks. There’s enough to do in a summer garden without stopping to investigate the occasional ex-hockey player behind the greenery. And if Justin knows anything about Dougie Hamilton — which he does, now — it’s that he’ll be better served by waiting him out. 

He hums tunelessly as he picks over the blueberry bushes. They’re finally in full fruit, the August sunlight just warm enough, the rain just steady enough. Each berry is the size of his pinky nail; nothing like they used to be, but then, before last summer, Justin hadn’t seen a fresh blueberry in 13 years. Last summer’s berries were tiny and tart, better suited to jam than anything. He thinks this year’s might be good with milk, or even cream, if anyone’s willing to trade for it. 

Perfect berries go into the bag in ones and twos. Justin leaves the imperfect ones on the bush, for preserves later. Every so often he pops one into his mouth.

He hears the tomato vines rustle.

Zucchini is next. The cool summers can’t put a damper on zucchini: he finds at least two or three ready to pick every day, on every plant. It’s gotten to the point where even Marty, never one to turn down free food, goes a little green when Justin appears on his doorstep with an armful. Justin runs a hand through his hair, sighs. Considers. Maybe he’ll pickle these; come winter, they’ll all be grateful for vegetables of any kind.

“My mom used to tell us about fried zucchini.”

Justin doesn’t turn. “Oh?”

“There was a place in her hometown that cut them into sticks, battered them, and served them with homemade ranch,” Dougie offers from somewhere behind his right shoulder. “She always insisted it was the only way zucchini was really good, when you got down to it.”

Justin snorts. “After this summer, I’m starting to think she might have had a point.” He tips his head to regard Dougie, holds eye contact. “You want to take some home with you?”

“Oh. Maybe.” Dougie rubs the back of his neck, flushes a little. “Thanks.”

Justin watches him a moment longer, then turns back to the zucchini. Less of these next year, then, and maybe a few pumpkin vines instead. He lets his mind wander to childhood memories of pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving, pumpkin bars rich with brown sugar and oats tucked in his lunchbox.

“I wanted to ask you about something,” says Dougie into the ensuing silence. He sounds — hesitant, and that’s more than enough to snap Justin’s thoughts out of pie and back to reality. 

“Shoot,” he says, turning, more than a little worried now. Dougie is a lot of things: thoughtful, funny, determined. Hesitant he’s not, or hasn’t been. Not that Justin’s seen.

“Well —“ Dougie cuts himself off, shifts his weight. “It’s an election year.”

That… wasn’t what Justin was expecting. “Yeah,” he replies slowly, “it is.”

And thank fuck for that, is what he doesn’t say. He knows as well as anyone what’s written in the Republic’s constitution regarding the president: one term, six years. He knows as well as any former player that a constitution, like a contract, is nothing but a piece of paper. And how easy, how dreadfully easy it is to make paper disappear.

But Toffoli’s approached the entire thing in good faith. Practically half his presidency, from what Justin can tell, has been dedicated to setting up the mechanisms for a peaceful transfer of power. Nothing can be taken for granted in this fragile new world of theirs. Justin’s grateful they ended up with a president who understands that, although, given that Tyler Toffoli is all of 28 years old, he often wonders what it cost.

He’s so caught up in his thoughts that he’s certain he mishears what Dougie says next. “Sorry, didn’t catch that.”

“I said, I think you should run.” Dougie doesn’t sound so hesitant anymore.

Justin wishes he could say the same. His mind is a buzz of static. He doesn’t want to imagine what his face looks like. “What?” he manages.

“Willy. You’re basically the perfect candidate.” Dougie holds up a hand, ticks off his fingers. “Member of the 2011-2012 Black, check. Stanley Cup winner, check. Leader of a ragtag yet determined band of former players rebuilding the Red and Silv — Carolina, I mean, sorry — check…”

“Hold on a second,” Justin interrupts. 

“… incredibly strong dad energy, check,” Dougie finishes, and the corner of his mouth quirks.

Justin frowns at him. “Two things. One, _former_ leader, give Jordo some credit. And two, what the hell does winning the Cup have to do with it?”

Dougie’s gaze is steady. “It shows that you have what it takes to go that far. Twice.”

The sudden surge of anger Justin feels startles him.

“You don’t,” he begins, and his throat nearly closes. He clears it and tries again. “You don’t understand at all, do you?” 

Dougie’s eyes go a little wide. Justin knows what he sounds like. Doesn’t care.

“You were drafted in 2011,” he continues. “You played in the O the year the war started. You have _no idea_ what it takes to go that far.”

He becomes aware that his voice has risen, and that Dougie’s backed away a couple of steps, hands raised placatingly. He looks a little hurt, but more than that he looks — afraid. Of Justin.

All the fight goes out of Justin at once. He sighs, slumps, scrubs a hand over his eyes. “You know what?” he says. “Let’s sit down for a minute.”

There’s a bench in the center of the garden, gray and weathered, armrests etched with initials. Justin sits, carefully, wincing as his knees twinge. Dougie hesitates for a barely-perceptible moment before following suit. For a while there is quiet, the only sound the rustle of the breeze through the leaves. The sun dapples patterns onto Justin’s arms. Onto Dougie’s, too, and onto his face, upturned into the warmth, looking impossibly young. Something softens in Justin’s chest. He’s never been able to stay angry at his team — any of them — for long. 

“Did I ever tell you about it?” he asks. “Winning the Cup, I mean?”

***

2006

Justin breathes in through his nose, out through his mouth. In, out, again and again, as though it’ll do a thing to settle his racing heart.

The locker room is a live wire. Laviolette’s made his pregame speech, the MO came in and said some shit that Justin’s already forgotten, and now there’s nothing between them and the most important game of their lives but a few scant minutes. Justin puts on his helmet. Takes it off, fiddles with the strap. Puts it on again and tightens it, rolling his head to either side. Rosey’s across the room, looking like he might vibrate out of his skin. Next to him, Wally sits deadly still, his gaze piercing enough to cut steel. Colesy rolls his shoulders, trying for nonchalance, but Justin sees how careful he is not to move his neck. In the corner, Wardo’s eyes are closed, face pale, and Staalsy paces in front of him, tapping his stick against the floor without rhyme or rhythm. God, but they’re all a fucking mess. A win tonight, in Game 7, after the horror show two nights ago, would be nothing short of a miracle.

“Sixty minutes.”

The voice is quiet, but it cuts through the room effortlessly. Everyone falls silent. 

Roddy’s sitting in his stall, staring down at the helmet in his hands. He looks up and Justin feels the breath leave his chest at the intensity in his eyes.

“Sixty minutes of hockey,” he continues, looking at each of them in turn, “and no matter what happens to you for the rest of your lives, your names will be on the Stanley Cup. And _no one_ can take that away from you.”

Justin looks at Kabs, who fingers his black-edged tags. At Wes, whose eyes are shining. 

“Sixty minutes,” says Roddy, “and you’re immortal.”

What is there to do, after that, but play the best god damn hockey they’ve ever played?

Every moment is surreal. Justin blinks and half the first is gone; he’s on the ice for his first shift of the second and he’s been on the ice for a hundred years. They have a 2-0 lead, and then it’s 2-1, and then the Orange and Blue pull their goalie and the air grows tight and desperate, so thick Justin can barely breathe. 

The puck pops loose along the boards. Justin’s at the point, trying to see through the clash of bodies, and then —

“Willy!”

He turns, and Staalsy rockets a pass to him before he even has time to think. The puck hits his stick blade like it’s been magnetized. The Orange and Blue defenders’ heads swivel.

“Go, go, fucking go!” Staalsy screams. 

Justin goes.

He skates like his life’s depending on it — because it is; he sees the glow of charged sticks from the corner of his eye, the gleam of knives — and the world falls away: there’s no more crowd, no more blinding lights, there’s just him and the open ice and the goal and the puck. Just like old times, doing laps on the backyard pond in Cobourg. 

Justin thinks about that pond. He thinks about his mother, who he hasn’t seen in years. He thinks about Wes, who played in his first Final when Justin was seven, who’s had three chances to win the Cup and been denied three times. He thinks about Kabs and Wally and Vasy. He thinks about Colesy, lying on the ice with a broken neck. He thinks about freedom, and how he hadn’t known what it meant while it still mattered, had taken it for granted the same way he took for granted the dark ice framed by trees under the blue Ontario sky.

He can almost feel the breeze in his hair. He taps it in.

The world explodes into light and noise.

He’s in the box for the last seconds of the game after lighting up his stick against one of the Orange and Blue players; his final punishment, perhaps, for what he did to Koivu in the first round, but it hardly matters. It’s all a dream after that. Confetti raining from the rafters. A red carpet — a red carpet! — rolled onto the ice. The Cup being brought out by white-gloved handlers with stone faces, and how can they possibly be so expressionless when they hold the pinnacle of Justin’s entire life in their hands? 

They guide Roddy over, restless as a caged wildcat, and he places his hands on the Cup with the commissioner just long enough for the media to snap a photo before he tears it away, hoists it above his head and screams, raw with triumph. The whole team screams with him, damn the consequences, damn the commissioner and the MOs and the Union, damn it all. They’re going to live forever. 

When Justin touches the Cup, he thinks his heart might burst through his ribs.

There are hats. There’s a team photo, Union players and imports sprawled on the ice together with no semblance of order, and for the first time there’s no one waiting to pull them apart. There are bottles and bottles of champagne, real champagne, with real alcohol. There’s an entire night that’s just them, the Red and Silver, and the Cup, which none of them can stop touching. There are stories, and jokes in four different languages, and laughter that turns into tears that turn right back into laughter again. Justin never wants it to end.

He gets one day. They all do. One day of freedom, his day with the Cup. His to do whatever he wants.

What he wants, he tells the handlers, is to go to Cobourg. What he wants to see his mother.

Of course, they say. Of course.

When he gets off the bus it’s like he’s been transported to a different world. The wind is cooler than he remembers, but the air is crisp and clean. There are trees and familiar buildings and there’s the lake glittering in the distance and there —

— there’s his mother, new lines around her eyes, tears sparkling on her cheeks as she smiles at him. Justin crosses the space to her in a heartbeat and pulls her into his arms, and he’s never letting go, he thinks, they can’t make him let go.

“I’m so proud of you,” she whispers, and strokes his hair, and Justin buries his face in her shoulder and cries.

Cobourg is in the heart of Blue and White territory, but Justin still gets to bring the Cup to one of the local rinks and watch the kids’ faces light up when they see it. They cluster close, eyes wide, unwilling to touch on the off chance they could be the ones playing for it someday. It’s still a dream to them, Justin realizes. They don’t know the reality, the blood and the pain and the long, long nights lying awake in bed, listening to muffled crying at the end of the hall. 

He isn’t going to spoil it for them, can’t even hint at the truth with the handlers so near, but he crouches to look at them all very seriously, holding their gazes one by one. 

“Take care of yourselves,” he says, and they nod, solemn, even though he knows not a single one of them understands.

He has one last place he has to go. 

A car drops him off at what remains of his childhood home. Justin had known, logically, that it probably wouldn’t still be standing, not after they’d all been moved into the downtown apartment blocks of concrete and steel, but he’d been holding out hope. It’s just a dilapidated skeleton now, though, a ghost of a house. He swallows around the lump in his throat.

The pond, thankfully, is still out back, and he finds an overturned stump to sit on and lace up his skates. There’s a handler waiting with the Cup, and Justin takes it from him, shifting to balance the weight.

He steps onto the dark ice under the blue Ontario sky, and he skates, and he breathes. In and out, over and over again.

**Author's Note:**

> I've wanted to write a fic inspired by the "Hockey at the End of the World" series since I read it. This was supposed to be mostly a post-"Tear Down Your Heroes" fic, because I love the current iteration of the Canes so, so much, but my hockey nostalgia feelings caught up with me and it became mostly a 2006 Stanley Cup flashback fic instead. It wasn't supposed to end where it does, either, and I might add onto it later, but I liked the poetic cinnamon tography of it all and also it's late at night and I'm tired. anyway
> 
> (title from Ride My Bike by Maude Latour)


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